Soul Winning
Sowing and Reaping. — Sometimes we lie passive, like the ploughed fields, and then our divine Sower casts into us the living seed; but soon other days arrive, when we are active, and yield unto God the results of his grace experienced in former days. It ought to be so. To you, beloved workers in the Mission-hall, or the Sunday-school, there will be a time of sowing; not much may be accomplished, tho a great deal of effort may be put forth. To me in preaching there are times for sowing, and nothing else but sowing; few seem to be the green blades which spring up around me. Perhaps a year may intervene before the worker shall see any reward for his toil: “The husbandman waiteth for the precious fruits of the earth.” The missionary upon his district, the Bible-woman on her round, may see no manifest effect produced by daily teaching; but harvest and seedtime are tied together in a sure knot. “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” Brethren, believe that, and be of good cheer. “Your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
Won by His Parents’ Love. — I have heard of a young man who had grown up and left the parental roof, and through evil influences, had been enticed into holding skeptical views. His father and mother were both earnest Christians, and it almost broke their hearts to see their son so opposed to the Redeemer. On one occasion they induced him to go with them to hear a celebrated minister. He accompanied them simply to please them, and for no higher motive. The sermon happened to be upon the glories of heaven. It was a very extraordinary sermon, and was calculated to make every Christian in the audience to leap for joy. The young man was much gratified with the eloquence of the preacher, but nothing more; he gave him credit for superior oratorical ability, and was interested in the sermon, but felt none of its power. He chanced to look at his father and mother during the discourse, and was surprised to see them weeping. He could not imagine why they, being Christian people, should sit and weep under a sermon which was most jubilant in its strain. When he reached hime, he said, “Father, we have had a capital sermon, but I could not understand what could make you sit there and cry, and my mother too f” His father said, “My dear son, I certainly had no reason to weep concerning my self, nor your mother, but I could not help thinking all through the sermon about you, for alas, I have no hope that you will be a partaker i:i the bright joys which await the righteous. It breaks my heart to think that you will be shut out of heaven.” His mother said, “The very same thoughts crossed my mind, and the more the preacher spoke of the joys of the saved, the more I sorrowed for my dear boy that he should never know what they were.” That touched the young man’s heart, led him to seek his father’s God, and before long he was at the same communion table, rejoicing in the God and Savior whom his parents worshipped. The travail comes before the bringing forth; the earnest anxiety, the deep emotion within, precede our being made the instrumnts of the salvation of others.
Fitting Ourselves to Save Others. — A man is drowning. I am on London Bridge. If I spring from the parapet and can swim, I can save him; but suppose I cannot swim, can I render any service by leaping into sudden and certain death with the sinking man? I am disqualified from helping him till I have the ability to do so. There is a school over yonder. Well, the first inquiry of him who is to be the master must be, “Do I know myself that which I profess to teach?” Do you call that inquiry selfish? Surely it is a most unselfish selfishness, grounded upon common sense. Indeed, the man who is not so selfish as to ask himself, “Am I qualified to act as a teacher?” would be guilty of gross selfishness in putting himself into an office which he was not qualified to fill. I will suppose an illiterate person going into the school, and saying, “I will be master here and take the pay,” and yet he cannot teach the children to read or write. Would he not be very selfish in not seeing to his own fitness? But surely it is not selfishness that would make a man stand back and say, “No, I must first go to school myself, otherwise it is but a mockery of the children for me to attempt to teach them any thing.” This is no selfishness, then, when looked at aright, which makes us see to our own salvation, for it is the basis from which we operate for the good of others.
Saved Souls Most Useful. — A man with no sensibility or compassion for other men’s souls, may accidentally be the means of a conversion; the good word which he ut ters will not cease to be good because the speaker had no right to declare God’s statutes. The bread and meat which were brought to Elijah were not less nourishing because the ravens brought them, but the ravens remained ravens still. A hard-hearted man may say a good thing which God will bless, but, as a rule, those who bring souls to Christ are those who first of all have felt an agony of desire that souls should be saved.
The Lost Redeemed. — Let me tell you a story of what once happened to Mr. Vanderkist, a city missionary, who toils all night long to do good in that great work. There had been a drunken broil in the street; he stepped between the men to part them, and said something to a woman who stood there concerning how dreadful a thing it was that men should thus be intemperate. She walked with him a little way, and he with her, and she began to tell him such a tale of woe and sin too, how she had been lured away from her parents’ home in Somersetshire, and had been brought up here to her soul’s eternal hurt. He took her home with him, and taught her the fear and love of Christ; and what was the first thing she did, when she returned to the paths of godliness, and found Christ to be the sinner’s Savior? She said, “Now I must go home to my friends.” Her friends were written to; they came to meet her at the station at Bristol, and you can hardly conceive what a happy meeting it was. The father and mother had lost their daughter; they had never heard from her; and there she was, brought back by the agency of this Institution, and restored to the bosom of her family.
Christ Rejoices When the Christian Saves a Soul. — The Lord Jesus must take great pleasure in the attempts of his servants to seek and to save souls: for they are learning to be shepherds like himself. When our King, Edward III., heard that the Black Prince was having a hard battle with the French, he smiled to think that his son was in a place where he could show his valor. When he was entreated to send off reinforcements, he refused; for he wished his son to have the undivided honors of the day. The Lord Jesus, the Captain of our salvation, puts some of his chosen into places of great peril, and he does not seem to send them all the help they could desire, in order that they may prove their faith and consecration, and thus earn their spurs. He takes a brotherly pleasure in the courage and faith which he himself has wrought in them. All the valor of Christ’s soldiers is given them by himself, and all that it achieves is to be attributed to him; yet he finds joy in seeing them exercise their graces. Like as a father delights to see his boy take prize after ago SPURGEON’S ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTES
prize at the University, like as a friend delights to see his friend elected to one honorable position after an other, so does Jesus rejoice in the honors earned by his servants in the field of service. When we save a soul from death, we may be sure that Jesus, the Savior, rejoices in the deed.
Joy of Soul-Winning. — I do not know any thing that can make a man forget his pain and weariness like grasping the hand of a sinner saved. “Oh,” saith the saved one, “God Almighty bless you! you nave brought me to Je sus.” This nerves us to new effort. I speak here from experience, for yesterday evening, when I was thinking of this subject, I was myself somewhat dull through pain and weakness, and as God would have it, I took up the Report of the Baptist Missionary Society, which will be issued to you on the first of June, and as I glanced over it, I saw my own name. It seems that our missionary in San Domingo has had a discouraging year, but it was lighted up with one most pleasing incident. A man had come down from the interior of Hayti to ask for baptism. Finding him to be a most intelligent Christian, well instructed in the gospel, the missionary asked how he came to know anything about it. In reply he told him that he had fallen in with a sermon translated into the French language which was preached by Mr. Spurgeon.
0 friends, I was dull no longer. I had meat to eat. Had an angel stood in the study, I could not have felt more delighted with his visit than I did when I read of a sinner saved. Here was a sermon translated into French, which was carried far away to Hayti, I do not know how, and there was read by a Romanist, who found by it salvation. God bless him! You cannot faint after such a success; can you?